Conventionally, certain types of wireless technologies, such as Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) systems and Wideband CDMA (WCDMA) systems, allow for soft handover of a communication device (e.g., mobile phone, computer, etc.) from one base station to another base station. Typically, during soft handover, the communication device can be communicating (e.g., transmitting, receiving) data concurrently with two or more base stations. Base stations or cells with which the communication device is communicating during soft handover can be part of an active set associated with the communication device. There also can be instances during soft handover where one or more base stations or cells are not actively communicating data with the communication device, but the communication device can be monitoring or “listening” to such base station(s) to determine respective radio link quality with respective base stations and decoding their signals, where the one or more base stations not actively communicating can be included in a monitored set associated with the communication device. For example, a base station that does not satisfy the qualifications (e.g., desired radio link quality with the communication device) to be part of an active set associated with a communication device but is defined as a neighbor of the communication device, can be made part of a monitored set (also referred to as monitored neighbor set) associated with the communication device. An advantage of soft handover with the communication device concurrently communicating with more than one base station is diversity and improved data transmission associated with the communication device, as compared to when the communication device is only communicating with one base station. However, there is a cost to the network with having redundancy of data transmission when using diversity, as the overall load on the Radio Network Controller (RNC) is increased (and available backhaul capacity decreased) due in part the redundant transmissions to several base stations resulting from employing soft handover.
Typically, the base stations also can be communicating with other communication devices in the network. As a result, if the number of communication devices communicating with a particular base station is relatively high and/or the types of communication engaged in by those communication devices is relatively data intense (e.g., multimedia download, movie download, etc.), the load on the particular base station or the load on the interface between the base station and RNC can be relatively high compared to other nearby base stations. There can be instances during soft handover where the communication device has a strong communication link with one base station, but communication with the communication device is being supplemented by one or more base stations on the active set associated with the communication device, where one (or more than one) of those one or more base stations is experiencing a relatively heavy backhaul load (e.g. Iub capacity) as compared to the best communicating base station(s) (e.g., best communicating base station is the one with highest quality on its Ec/Io, where Ec is carrier power and Io is total interference). It is desirable to be able to reduce the backhaul load (e.g. Iub capacity) on such base station(s) experiencing a heavy load, while still maintaining a strong radio link with the communication device.